El CLAP y la Gran Corrupción del siglo XXI en Venezuela

This article analyzes, with the support of bibliographic-documentary methodologies, different dimensions of the CLAP program (Local Committee for Supply and Production), exploring its link with the great corruption of the 21st century in Venezuela. It reviews the main characteristics and background of this program for the distribution of subsidized foodstuffs which, through “State-partisan” mechanisms of micro-local scope, covers a very significant part of Venezuelan households. This distribution has a varied periodicity in the country and provides a limited portion of the nutritional requirements of its recipients. However, the “chavista” regime tends to present CLAP –which began in 2016– as a medium with substantial food contributions, while at the same time it attempts to underestimate the drastic impoverishment that the population has suffered since 2013. Nevertheless, the overwhelming national socio-economic deterioration –expressed in the state of complex humanitarian emergency and nutritional alarm– is a framework that contributes to highlight the comparative ineffectiveness of CLAP in relation to many other alternatives (especially direct subsidies, well designed) that could channel massive support for the nutrition of large sectors of the nation. It is concluded that, beyond its popularity, CLAP’s programmatic shortcomings (and its food mission background) seem so striking that it is difficult to separate its implementation and persistence with respect to the interests associated with the mechanisms of the Great Corruption of the 21st century, in which the forms of illicit political clientelism of which this program can be considered a prominent example.